Day 105: Binaries Continued February 15, 2010

1. Visual Journal Reflection. Students wrote for ten minutes about the experience of keeping a visual journal. All students must turn in a reflection with their journal. Each day the visual journal is late, the grade will be automatically reduced by about 3 percentage points (A+ to A to A- to B+ etc.). Here are reflection questions:

Answer the following questions on a separate sheet of paper stuck inside your journal or on the last page of your journal.

After looking through your journal, what ideas or images do you see repeated? Why do you think this is? (For example, if you used a lot of red in your journal, what does that represent? If you returned over and over to a certain idea, why was it important?)

How did the visual journal change your reading experience? (How did your read differently because you had to do a visual journal?)

What grade do you think you deserve and why?

If you were the teacher, what would you do differently next year?

2. Reading Quiz on Final Chapters. All students took a 6-7 question reading quiz. If you were absent, you need to make it up. Many students did not finish reading, and their grades will show it. I will accept corrections on this quiz, though the corrections, as always, must be thorough.

3. Binaries in TKaM. As a class, we spent a few minutes free associating on a pair of binaries suggested by a student. For instance: love/hate, good/bad, black/white. We found that certain characters and events “crossed over” the line, thereby breaking down the binary system completely. We discussed the importance of the character or event in determining key understandings from the novel.

4. Binaries in Groups. Students took 15 minutes to create their own list of binaries in small groups. Groups were assigned a binary set to work with and then added characters, ideas, and events. Each group found a number of “crossovers” and explained to the class why those crossovers were important.

HW: Standard – Finish your list of binaries and find four quotes to support your list. Honors – Write a paragraph explaining the importance of the “crossover” character or event. Why is the broken binary system important?